Year 7 Day 294 Still Waiting
22 October 2014 | At Linga Linga, Near Inhambane, Mozambique
Dave/Sunny and Breezy
I got up this morning at 0500 with hopes of starting our passage to South Africa. Richards Bay is a little over 400 nm and Durban is just about 485 nm. However, before I even checked the GRIB file and the spot forecast I was not optimistic. This was because the winds this morning were blowing about 15 knots, which is unusual for dusk. Usually, it is well below 10 knots at this time in the morning.
The forecasts showed that the winds would be piping up this morning and coming from the south so we decided to just stay put until tomorrow morning. The forecasts were both showing that the winds should be dying down to below 10 knots come midnight tonight and stay that way until noon on the 25th. If that ends up being the case, that would give us 54 hours (since we will be leaving around 0600 tomorrow) to make the 400 nm to Richards Bay averaging just 7.4 knots with a current that should be giving us a 2 to 3 knot boost. If we do better than that and are able to just under 9 knots with that 2 to 3 knot boost we could make Durban. That sounds a bit optimistic but who knows. Also, the forecasts have been a bit squirrely and if things improve just a bit, then maybe we could get 60 or so hours of favorable winds and then we would only need to average just 8 knots to make Durban. If the forecast goes the other way and things deteriorate faster, we can always bail out and stop at Cape Inhaca which is only about 220 nm away. Thus, with all things considered, we are optimistic that we will be able to leave here early tomorrow morning and head south.
We really did not have much to do today since we had prepped the boat yesterday just in case we were able to leave this morning. Thus, we just read, listened to music and played cards to pass the time.
We did get a great email this morning from a blog reader, Willy, who lives in Richards Bay. He has been reading our blog since we started 7 years ago. He is hoping we do stop in Richards Bay so we can get together. He even has offered to drive his inflatable ski boat out of the harbor and into the ocean to meet us if we are able to continue on to Durban. How great is that! We have suggested that if we do go directly to Durban that we should just rent a car and drive back to Richards Bay to have lunch together. We love meeting people who live in the countries that we visit as we learn so much more from them regarding their country, the customs and the people. Plus, each person we meet has so much local insight and usually good sailing knowledge which helps us out so much. We are really excited about meeting up with Willy, especially since he has been following our blog since the beginning.